Football Recruiting Notebook - Back's and Receivers

Over the next couple week's I'll try and give everyone a status of where Coach Franklin and his staff stand in the 2013 recruiting cycle.  Obviously commitments don't mean much at this time of year as signing day is 5 months away, but its more than encouraging seeing what the staff has done so far.  As of today, the Vandy football staff has 21 verbal commitments (7 of who are RB's, TE's and WR's).  ESPN seems to be higher on the individual recruits with 10 four star guys (as opposed to Rivals 3 four star guys), but Rivals has Vandy as the 15th rated class while ESPN has them as 19.  Anyway here is a brief synopsis on each WR, RB and TE prospect.

1) Carlos Burse -WR (6'2, 194) - Burse is a 4-star prospect for both Rivals and ESPN.com (82 rating), and ranked as a top 50 WR in both systems.  Burse is one of the 7 verbals from Georgia, a state that the program (Johnson, Caldwell and Franklin staffs) have done a great job recruiting in for the last couple years.  He has offers from Florida Miss State, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Puke Orange and Va Tech among others.

2) Jonathan Ford - RB (5'11, 190) - Ford is a 3-star prospect for both Rivals and ESPN.com (74 rating) out of New Hope, Alabama.  Ford has offers from Ole Miss, Miss State and Stanford.  Although not as highly ranked as Brian Kimbrow last year, he has a similar rating to what Jerron Seymour, Zac Stacy and Warren Norman had.

3) Nathan Marcus - TE (6'5, 210) -Marcus is a 3-star prospect for both Rivals and ESPN.com, and ESPN has him as the #14 overall TE.  Marcus is from Illinois and has offers from other "Academic" type schools such as Duke, Boston College, Wake Forrest and not surprisingly Northwestern.  So he is the exact type of guy who the game against Northwestern this weekend could matter to.

4) Latevius Rayford - WR (6'0, 173) - At first I thought his name was "Late-virus" which would have been awesome.  Anyway, he is a 3-star prospect in both systems and #78 WR according to ESPN.com.  Rayford is also one of 4 verbals from Memphis players (an area where we have had some success but not sustained success).  Rayford has offers from Memphis, Western Kentucky, ASU, Purdue and Marshall.

5) Gerald Perry - WR (5'9, 154) - So he is tiny.......I mean I'm 5'8, 158 lbs (as of Monday morning) but I obviously had no athletic skill whatsoever.  So he is tiny but he has 4.4 speed and had a 36 inch vertical according to Rivals.  He is a 3-star ranked recruit in both services and also hails from Memphis, with offers from Memphis, Ole Miss, Cinci, Marshall and Arkansas State.

6) Dominic Walker - WR (6'2, 195) - Hailing from Orlando, Florida, the 4-star recruit (83 rating from ESPN.com) and 3-star on Rivals.com, has offers from BC, FSU, Texas A&M, Louisville, South Florida and Memphis.  Walker is tall and has good leaping ability but is not known as a speedster.

7) Mac Weaver - TE (6'5, 235) - Weaver is the third offensive skill guy hailing from Memphis.  He is also the top receiver/TE recruit along with Burse.  Weaver is a 3-star on Rivals (#21 overall TE), and a 4-star on ESPN.com (with an 80 rating and a ranking of 9th overall TE).  Weaver has offers coming out the ying yang...ASU, Arkansas, Clemson, Illinois, UK, Louisville, Marshall, Memphis, Miss State, Ole Miss, Purdue, Puke Orange, UVA and Wake.  His dad also played at South Carolina, though they aren't listed as giving him an offer or having interest.

I don't think this will be 100% the group of skill guys signing on the dotted line on signing day (might be especially hard to keep two highly rated TE's committed), but its great to have a bunch of four star guys committed already to go along with some very solid 3-star recruits.

Vandy doesn't have a single offensive tackle committed so far, so next week I'll skip the QB position before heading to the defensive side of the ball.